Why is Win32DiskImager not working on Windows 7? Does it fail to install, does it fail to see your card reader, does it fail to see your file system, does it fail to see your card, does it fail during the image process? It would help other users if you provided this information.

I am kinda surprised it does not work since mine works perfectly on Windows 7 (I have 64 bit Professional). Did you check the md5sum for a corrupted installation zip file; it is available on the developers web site here along with a troubleshooting forum:

win32diskimager does not work for me, on Win 7 desktop, WinXP laptop nor on a WinXP desktop. (3 different machines !!!)

I've tried multiple SD cards via a USB card reader AND via the internal SD card reader on the laptop, still nothing; the drive letter just does not show up in win32diskimager, it's the most frustrating piece of software I've ever come across.

Other software I've tried:

dd.exe on windows from (http://www.chrysocome.net/dd) this seemed to write an .img to the SD card, but I couldn't see any boot partition on the card afterwards (using MS windows explorer to view the card, it just says it is unformated)

I also tried the fedora-arm-installer-1.0.0 but that didn't work either, it gave the same results as win32diskimager...I have a sneeking suspicion that they're using the same libraries or something.

So after waiting 3 months for a RPi I can only say I'm massively dissapointed with the results.

byon wrote:win32diskimager does not work for me, on Win 7 desktop, WinXP laptop nor on a WinXP desktop. (3 different machines !!!)

I've tried multiple SD cards via a USB card reader AND via the internal SD card reader on the laptop, still nothing; the drive letter just does not show up in win32diskimager, it's the most frustrating piece of software I've ever come across.

Other software I've tried:

dd.exe on windows from (http://www.chrysocome.net/dd) this seemed to write an .img to the SD card, but I couldn't see any boot partition on the card afterwards (using MS windows explorer to view the card, it just says it is unformated)

I also tried the fedora-arm-installer-1.0.0 but that didn't work either, it gave the same results as win32diskimager...I have a sneeking suspicion that they're using the same libraries or something.

So after waiting 3 months for a RPi I can only say I'm massively dissapointed with the results.

(

Hi Byon, I appreciate your frustration having had to mess around a bit to be able to rewrite images to cards.

Secondly, does windows still see it as unformatted or have you done anything else to it since using DD? Can you check the properties of the SD Card in disk manager (from the search box type diskmgmt.msc); does it report it as only been 56 Mb big and RAW file system ttype? If that's the case have you tried it in the RPi?

I find that windows 7 is not recognizing the boot partition on the SD Card even though it is listed as vfat under linux, but does report it as unformatted and only 56 Mb. Windows is a pain when it comes to managing multi-partition removable devices and this is where a lot of the problems people are having arise.

If you find yourself stuck with a non booting SDCard and windows is convinced it is only 56 Mb try the following DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK! I have had no trouble with this process but if you -B your HDD you are SOOL, I am not responsible for you breaking or otherwise rendering your PC fubar
(If you are not certain you are operating on your SD Card you should not perform this process);
Download flashnul: http://shounen.ru/soft/flashnul/flashnul-1rc1.zip
Extract flashnul the files to c:\flashnul
Run an elevated command prompt (start menu > all programs > accessories > Right click on Command Prompt and run as administrator )
Now at the command prompt type:

This erases the partition information, if you now remove and reinsert the sdcard windows should see its approx full size and ask you to format. Format it with that ever defaults windows suggest.
You should then be able to retry with the latest win32diskimager software if you were not using it before. Hopefully it should see the drive letter and carry on happily. If it does work you will be back to having a SD Card that is only 56Mb big which windows thinks needs formatting (Don't!), insert in RPi and hopefully you will be on your way.

As the current maintainer of Win32 Disk Imager (aka Win32 Image Writer), I am surprised to find people reporting issues with this program anywhere but in the program's bug tracking system (currently Launchpad.net but moving to SourceForge by the end of the year).

I am currently looking into reports of it not working on newer systems with SDIO based built-in readers, but since I am a Linux developer, it isn't easy. I will attempt to make a diagnostic button for people to click that will generate useful system information that I can use, but it won't be available any time soon (I only work on this in my very limited spare time).

If you have any information that may help for me to reproduce this (or other issues), please report them either here or here.

Having the same issues - but I think it's only because of the fact that once you successfully write an image to the SD, you cannot re-partition with win32diskimager. It works fine for a "clean" SD card, but not for one with an existing Pi image.

Piie wrote:Having the same issues - but I think it's only because of the fact that once you successfully write an image to the SD, you cannot re-partition with win32diskimager. It works fine for a "clean" SD card, but not for one with an existing Pi image.

I've had no problems overwriting an image on the SD card with a new one using win32diskimager on Windows 7 so you must have some other factor coming into play. I DID have problems when using a built-in SD reader/writer until I rebooted. However I now do it via a USB SD adapter and the plugging/unplugging of the adapter between writes seems to reset things without the need for a reboot.

Indeed - I used a built-in reader on my Sony laptop - good for one write only - went and got an external card reader and all working now - except, I think my Pi power supply (Old HTC charger) is not up to the task.

Win32DiskImager did not work for me either, using W7 64-bits. It only created the 56MB FAT partition and after that gave the message:
"an error occurred when attempting to write data from handle. error 5 "

After that, the SD card was unusable until a reset of MBR and partitions was done through a low level formatting tool, and post FAT32 formatting.

I used the Road Kill image utility and everything went fine. I stepping now onto Raspberry installing.

Win32diskimager is not fit for purpose. It took *three* hours to backup my 8gig SD card, then crashed with a 'not enough disk space' message, when I inserted an 8gig class 10 blank card to back up the image to. Not so, my amateur programmer friend. If you're a part timer, that can't support it, *don't* release it!

I'm afraid that I can't waste any more of my time poring over the forums to find out why it works on some setups and not others, and people coming on here to write, "It works for me", are morons [I mean, are they serious?] !

DD also doesn't show the device, even though, after formatting, XP finds it and read and writes to it with no problems. The hours I've spent trying to do the most trivial thing you can imagine, and the hours I've now spent trawling through idiotic posts online, have revealed this device to be 'all show, and no go;'

Thirty years ago, I was programming C64 machine code, within five minutes of getting the thing out of the box. All these years later, the Raspberry Pi is going to lead to more people pulling their hair out, than actually doing anything with it.

As for backing up SD cards ... Not all 8GB SD cards are the same size. 8GB is an approximation. That isn't the fault of Win32diskimager. If you used two identical cards (same brand/model) it probably would have worked.

... but ultimately the Raspberry Pi, Win32diskimager and Fedora ARM Installer all "work for me". I don't think the delighted-to-disappointed ratio is as bad as you think.

I am sorry that Win32Image Writer doesn't work for some people here. The best I can say is that I am trying.

For what it's worth, I am a Linux developer, with a primary focus on automation and testing. I only took over maintenance due to the sudden popularity of this program (Android hackers and Rpi users, etc). It is an enormous strain to develop an app like this for Windows and ensure that it works on both 32bit and 64bit versions, from XP to Windows 8.

My biggest frustration as a developer is when a user rants about it not working, but doesn't include any details for me to either fix or help them through. One commenter mentioned their C64 as being easier. Let me ask you, how many different types of hardware configurations did you have available for your C64? How many times did you upgrade your OS only to find that there were massive changes to some of the underlying API's you relied on? How many of those changes were documented?

Any feedback is welcome, but I would request that you post feedback/bugs on the appropriate bug site (launchpad.net for now, soon to have a new bug tracker on sourceforge) as opposed to ranting about it here (this link was on the 3rd page of my google search).

Guess I can only thank you for maintaining an excellent piece of software, then! Other than the 'old' startup error message on Win7x64, I have had no issues what so ever - despite using the built-in card reader on my Thinkpad.

I also had trouble with win32diskimager. It wouldn't recognize the 32Gb card my ancient Thinkpad's (x40 and I love it still) built-in card reader, although the Thinkpad had no trouble reading/writing the card. (I didn't have a smaller card handy, size may not be relevant.) This utility worked worked to copy the file. More details follow the quote.

jtbutcher wrote:If you find yourself stuck with a non booting SDCard and windows is convinced it is only 56 Mb try the following DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK! I have had no trouble with this process but if you -B your HDD you are SOOL, I am not responsible for you breaking or otherwise rendering your PC fubar
(If you are not certain you are operating on your SD Card you should not perform this process);
Download flashnul: http://shounen.ru/soft/flashnul/flashnul-1rc1.zip
Extract flashnul the files to c:\flashnul
Run an elevated command prompt (start menu > all programs > accessories > Right click on Command Prompt and run as administrator )
Now at the command prompt type:

This erases the partition information, if you now remove and reinsert the sdcard windows should see its approx full size and ask you to format. Format it with that ever defaults windows suggest.
You should then be able to retry with the latest win32diskimager software if you were not using it before. Hopefully it should see the drive letter and carry on happily. If it does work you will be back to having a SD Card that is only 56Mb big which windows thinks needs formatting (Don't!), insert in RPi and hopefully you will be on your way.

If you read "flashnul --help", it has a copy command (the one you want is "Load"). To verify that you are operating on the correct drive, use "flashnul -p" while the SD card is out, note the drive sizes, then pop the SD card back in and use "flashnul -p" again. It's not that complicated or scary. Then use

I've landed here as I am experiencing the very same problems listed on this post. Tried both XP & Win7 PC & laptops with various SD readers and SDcards. I cannot believe that this vital utility does not work !

It's a very small utility. But on my Win 7 system, it takes ages to start! Bafflingly, the disk light is hammering away during all this time:heaven knows what it's doing... I can't tell whether it's up to something on the main hard disk or on the SD card, since the system has a solid state disk, so there is no telltale noise. But it does eventually start and works OK for me.

Had the same problem with win32diskimager: both internal and external card reader were not detected and so my SD card could not be selected. Spent hours with alternative notebooks, OS versions and even workarounds under LINUX were not successful. Anyway - a downgrade brought the breakthroug: it worked now with win32diskimager V0.1 without any problems!

Works fine for me too.. I just found SDFormatter, so it saves a little time needing to reboot the laptop with Knoppix, then running Disk Utility to recover the partition. can't use the SD socket on another laptop that dedicated Linux, because the socket seems to be munged-up. (recognizes the card, but keeps wanting to re-format, or won't recognize the file table. And no, it's not a driver problem. ANY OS, it fails.)

I just bought a Pi but but I can not create a Wheezy SD using win32diskimager : I run it, it detects correctly the SD unit, I set the wheezy image on my drive, click "write" and then get back with the following message : "An error occured when attempting to get a handle on the file.
Error 123 : La syntaxe du nom de fichier, de repertoire ou de volume est incorrecte" (Sorry, there is a piece of french inside because I am french).
My system is W7 64.
Does somebody has an idea ?